Cuddles

Our little helper in the snow that has fallen
since we left Latvia

Last week was a little fraught, trying to get ready whilst still not quite so well. I had hoped to get my uni work done before going away, but that wasn't going to happen, I just couldn't manage getting all our stuff washed, the house clean and be coherent enough to work my way through my assignments. Ian had also hoped to get a lot of preparation work done on the land to make sure we didn't get flooding whilst away, but that needed some snow to start melting and there wasn't much of that happening, in fact he was even on yet more snow clearing duty just before we went after another snow fall. When we left to travel to England on the Wednesday it was -18C - rather cold for March, even in Latvia. Our neighbour from our apartment block is looking after things while we are away and sent pictures of even more snow since we have gone. Apparently her son was going to clean the snow away, bless him, that would be a lot of cleaning if he managed it and he's only little - my little helper in the summer for those who remember those posts.

Pops in his favourite pose

England was warmer, but not as much as we would have thought. Although it was cold in Latvia, it is often without the stiff breeze that you get near the coast in England. Our leggings went back on and the fleeces dug back out as it tried to snow, fortunately it didn't succeed in doing more than producing a few flakes in the breeze. Our welcome from our son, his wife and new baby was warm though. It has been a pleasure to see our son enjoying fatherhood and working well with the baby. None of this hands off or awkwardness that you sometimes see in new fathers. Ian hasn't lost the knack of getting babies off to sleep though. The little one had been ill the week before and so was a little more grizzly at times and Pops, as Ian is called, was able to get him off to sleep. As the week went on, the little one got better and we could see his smiley little character come through more and more - yes we are quite smitten and yes we got plenty of cuddles.

After the Thanksgiving, four generations!

My parents came down for the weekend too as there was a Thanksgiving for our son's little one, so we went out for walks, ate out quite a bit and generally enjoyed the company. We went out to a lovely fish restaurant and Ian and I shared a meze fish meal - well it saved us having to decide which fish we wanted to eat. We do like fish and it is not something we can easily obtain in our rural village in Latvia, unless we take up fishing ourselves. On one of our walks we found a little craft fair, which wasn't brilliant, apart from one stall which had novel gift items. There were cup cake baby socks and baby items put together in such a way it looked like a pram - very ingenious, maybe more expensive than buying just a pair of socks and a couple of mini silicone rubber cupcake cases, but so interesting and different they made a lovely little gift for grandchild number two.

Arundel castle

It was a sign of the times that our new granddaughter was announced to us via email on our son's smartphone while we were out and about, but the announcement was almost instantaneous. Despite the fact our daughter was in Australia and we were in the UK, we were able to keep up-to-date with the labour, or unfortunately, the lack of labour and the resulting c-section. We were able to send comments and encouragements along the way and when she was bored in hospital waiting for the her baby to put in an appearance we were able to email back and forth. Makes quite a difference to the times when someone might be aware that a family member was going into hospital but you then had to wait until after the birth and dad had got sent home to find out what happened. Amazing what differences new technologies can make.

A little different from Latvia, still cold though

By the way, sorry for the delay in updating the blog but all will be revealed next week